From January 20, 2009 until January 3, 2011, a period of more than 700 days, Democrats controlled the White House and held overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress. And for the past six months, with increasing vitriol and ever elevated volume, they have been criticizing Republicans for their attempts to finish the work Democrats left undone, like not passing a budget for FY 2011.

If the president thought raising the debt ceiling was so important, why then didn’t he schedule a vote to do so when his party controlled Congress? Obama, John Hinderaker writes,

. . . is now fixated on the “deadline” of August 2, 2011, but where was he in 2009? Or 2010? Or prior to last week? It has been over two years since the federal government has had a budget. For Obama to adopt a sanctimonious “eat your peas” approach to the federal budget is so disingenuous that it is not surprising that Republicans find him infuriating to negotiate with.

When Democrats were in power, they ran up the tab, acting as if they would never be no consequences to their spendthrift policies. And now they’ve left the Republicans to clean up the mess they left behind and is now faulting them for not doing it the way the Democrats (claim they) would have done it when they had the chance. They had the chance but didn’t take it.

Instead of criticizing the Republicans, why doesn’t the president’s party acknowledge its own responsibility for the current impasse?

Three days ago, Ed Morrissey joined Time’s Jay Newton-Small in asking if the House Speaker responsible for the greatest accumulation of debt in U.S. History had been marginalized:

Despite losing the midterm elections on the issue of spending and deficits, Pelosi wondered aloud in a White House strategy meeting why debt-ceiling negotiations had to involve spending cuts at all, surprising everyone else in the room . . . .

As the leader of a House caucus in a clear minority, Pelosi has already become largely irrelevant, especially after losing the midterms in such spectacular fashion. Now Newton-Small says that Barack Obama might make her even more obsolete by directly dealing with her lieutenant, Steny Hoyer, to get the moderate Democrats on board any deal . . .

Do wonder if Mrs. Pelosi has taken a gander at the figures and charts showing an explosion in deficit spending under her watch. The resourceful Jim Hoft has the charts, one of which I reproduce to show that the deficit decreasing under the Republican Congresses of the middle George W. Bush years, skyrocketed when Mrs. Pelosi took the gavel in the House of Representatives in 2007:

The arrow points to the deficit of the first budget passed by a House helmed by the San Francisco Democrat.

Has she been that removed from the politics of the last two-and-and-half years to remain so clueless about growing public concerns about excessive government spending?

“It is hard,” the president said in his press conference today, “to persuade people to do hard stuff that includes trimming benefits and increasing revenues. . . . Reason we have a problem now is people keep avoiding hard things.” (Via Gateway Pundit.)

While Frank served on the House Banking Committee in the 1990s [as what is now the Financial Services was then called], his partner, Herb Moses, worked at Fannie Mae as assistant director of product initiatives from 1991 to 1998. The two lived together at that time, breaking up in 1998, “a few months after Moses ended his seven-year tenure at Fannie Mae.”

“Frank actually called up the company (Fannie Mae) and asked them to hire his companion, who had just gotten an MBA from the Amos Tuck School of Business (at Dartmouth). . . . Of course the company was happy to provide a job for his companion and rolled out the red carpet in a series of interviews with a variety of executives, and it ultimately did hire the man.”

Wonder how the media would react if a journalist reported that a Republican member of the House Armed Services Committee got her husband a job at the Pentagon. (more…)

Federal outlays already increasing at a rapid pace with Republican Congresses increased at an even more rapid pace when Nancy Pelosi took over as House Speaker and Harry Reid, thanks to a new crop of Democratic Senators, elected with the help of then-chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Charles Schumer, became Senate majority leader.

“What we have here is a flea, wagging a tail, wagging a dog,” said Schumer, chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

“The flea are the minority of House Republicans who are hard right, the tail is the House Republican caucus, and the dog is the government,” Schumer explained. “That flea is influencing what the dog does … and it is sad.”

Schumer for more than a week has been arguing that Tea Party conservatives will be to blame if there is a shutdown.

(Via Ann Althouse.) Sorry, Charlie, the reason Tea Party conservatives have such clout is because their outrage at the increasing size of the federal government has resonated with the American people, leading to the election of Republican legislators (and at least one Senate Democrat) who want to hold the line on spending.

Earlier today, Jim Geraghty reported that yesterday the president said “the need for a budget deal to avoid a” government shutdown, “We are prepared to put whatever resources are required in terms of time and energy to get this done. But that’s what the American people expect.”

While we here in Los Angeles are focused on the downpour and our news media on the attacks on Libya, we still need bear in mind that the current divided Congress has yet to finish the work the 111th (i.e., the Pelosi-Reid Congress) left undone. They still haven’t passed a 2012 budget.

You see, the Democratic Senate has rejected the budget the Republican House has passed.

If you had to pick the poster child for budgetary irresponsibility over the last few years — and certainly for 2010 — it would have to be former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Not only did Democrats under her Speakership raise discretionary spending 18% in three years, not only did she pass a Pay-Go law and then fail to adhere to it even once, Pelosi became the first Speaker since Watergate to fail to pass a budget resolution for a fiscal year. In 2010, despite having a 77-seat majority in the House, a Senate which her party held by 18 seats, and a Democrat in the White House, Pelosi failed — or refused — to pass a budget for FY2011. Instead, she pushed continuing resolutions in order to hide spending until after the midterms, and failed even then to pass a budget.

When Speaker Pelosi took over Congress the national deficit was $162 billion. When she exited in January 2011 it was at $1.29 Trillion dollars. Pelosi and Barack Obama even managed to triple the national deficit in his first year after the stimulus passed.

“House Republicans,” Kara Rowland writes in the Washington Times, writes, “this weekend approved a funding bill that cuts 2011 spending levels by $61 billion compared with 2010, but the measure now goes to the Senate, where majority Democrats oppose it.” Actually, I quibble with the word to which I added emphasis in that sentence. While Republicans voted the bill out of the House, it’s won’t be going to the Senate right away. You see, according to the Senate’s web-page, the Senate will be out of session next week.

So, that doesn’t give the Democratic-controlled chamber much time to consider the funding bill and work out compromise legislation with the House before the continuing resolution funding the federal government expires the following week, on March 4 to be precise. The reason we need such a resolution is that last year when Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress, they failed to pass a budget for the 2011 Fiscal Year (which began last October 1).

Too busy were Democrats with the big ticket items on their party’s agenda, that they neglected one of the legislature’s fundamental responsibilities, passing a budget. So, without a budget, both Houses need to agree to a “short-term spending resolution to keep the government running” after March 4. Without this resolution, the government shuts down.

Now, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, as I reported on Friday, is laying the groundwork to blame Republicans for such a shutdown. But, if it weren’t for her failure last year when she was House Speaker to pass a budget, Congress wouldn’t this month be considering a continuing resolution. Her successor John Boehner has had to finish up the work she and her fellow Democrats left undone. And if Mrs. Pelosi’s Senate counterparts were committed to avoiding a government shutdown, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would call his chamber into session.

The Obama administration is examining whether the new health care law can be used to require insurance plans to offer contraceptives and other family planning services to women free of charge.

This requirement grow out of an amendment slipped into the legislation “by Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, requiring officials to pay special attention to the ‘unique health needs of women.'” But, the real issue is not the merits (or demerits) of offering contraceptive care, but the requirement that insurance plans offer them.

Shouldn’t private companies be allowed the freedom to decide which benefits they offer while consumers choose the policies which offers the benefits they seek? But, not under the regime created by Obamacare. If a company doesn’t want to offer contraception, well, too bad, the government will be taking their freedom away.

Under the plan, the administration is examining, the federal government could thus require Catholics (and others who oppose contraception on religious grounds) to offer plans which pay for services they oppose on moral grounds, causing many to drop health care coverage altogether.

If private insurers (and by extension private employers buying policies from said insurers) want to cover contraception, that should be their choice, but the state should not require them to do so. And now, the Obama administration is weighing regulations making that choice for them (and depriving others of the choice not to cover contraception).

Well, fewer Democrats voted for repeal than I had anticipated. Gotta give the unpopular Minority Leader credit for holding her caucus together. Still, the Republican leadership did a lot better holding their caucus together for the repeal vote than their Democratic counterparts did with their caucus in the previous Congress: all 242 Republicans backed repeal:

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the healthcare law on the books would increase spending, raise taxes and eliminate jobs.

“Repeal means paving the way for better solutions that will lower the costs without destroying jobs or bankrupting our government,” Boehner said in remarks on the floor before the vote.

“Let’s stop payment on this check before it can destroy more jobs or put us into a deeper hole.”

The vote to roll back the president’s signature domestic achievement of the 111th Congress just 10 months after its passage underscores the deep divisions that still surround the new law. But whether House action will signal the beginning of a rapid dismantling of the healthcare overhaul or serve merely as a historical footnote remains to be seen.

For that to happen, Republicans will need just two Democratic votes (if by original passage, she is referring to the bill then-Rep. Joseph Cao (R-La) supported). I expect at least a dozen Democrats to vote with a unanimous Republican caucus for repeal. Other Democrats will follow the lead the president took when serving in the Illinois Senate.

There will be about 25 (perhaps as many as 40) more votes to repeal Obamacare than there were votes to pass it (219) last March (219). House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who, when Speaker last year, was masterful as rounding up Democratic votes to get to a bare majority will have trouble wrangling as many votes as there were Republicans in the House at the time (178). Methinks that, in the end, only about 170 members, all Democrats, will vote against repeal. (But, as per the above, a good number of Democrats will either vote present or will have trouble making it to Capitol Hill at the time of the vote.) (more…)

Now that Congress has repealed Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT), seems that John McCain has changed his tune a bit, vowing to make repeal work:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Thursday he would work to help implement the repeal of the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, despite his opposition to that legislation.

McCain signaled he had made peace with the lame-duck bill to do away with the military’s ban on openly gay and lesbian service members, which he had sharply criticized.

“I think I have to do everything I can to make sure that the impact on the morale, retention, recruitment and battle effectiveness of the military is minimized as much as possible,” McCain said on Fox Business. “It is a law and I have to do whatever I can to help the men and women who are serving, particularly in combat, cope with this new situation. I will do everything I can to make it work.”

Well, maybe he hasn’t changed his tune, but has instead resigned himself to its passage. And because of his high regard for the military, he realizes that for the sake of our armed forces, it must be made to work.

. . . the Tea Party was in many ways a net asset for the GOP as Republicans grabbed control of the House and cut into the Democratic majority in the Senate.

However, there was collateral damage as Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) and other Senate GOP hopefuls seen as the party’s best chance of winning general-election races were ousted in primaries. Some blamed Tea Party candidates for costing Republicans a Senate majority to go with their new majority in the House.

Now, the question will be whether 2011 becomes the year where the Republican House, consistent with Tea Party principles, rejects big-government programs and passes legislation repealing the statist initiatives passed in the 111th Congress while scaling back those federal programs which helped create the financial mess of 2008 and the ongoing economic downturn.

Let us hope that the powers that be in Washington, including some who held significant sway over Republicans like Castle, do not hold the influence they once did over elected Republicans. And that instead Tea Party principles, nearly identical to those of a great man whose centennial we celebrate this year, guide those election officials.

2010 was indeed the year when the Tea Party helped transform the electoral landscape. Maybe 2011 be the year when it transforms the legislative landscape. (more…)

To many on the left, including a number of leading members of the Democratic Party, whenever Republicans try to block big-government initiatives, they’re engaging in obstruction, as if progress requires ever more state interference in our lives.

They never seem to grasp that we believe the best way forward is with the least amount of government necessary to establish justice and insure domestic tranquility. Progress comes not from the machinations of legislators and bureaucrats but through the actions of individuals and the private institutions we form in order to improve our lot and enjoy the benefits of mutual association

When conservatives try to legislate according to such progressive ideas, even if they know they are unlikely to see such legislation enacted given the conditions of the 112th Congress, Democrats are quick to describe their motivations as duplicitous or otherwise underhanded. Just listen to what my Congressman (who himself has not worked in the private sector since the president was in grade school) has to say about the incoming House majority:

“I think what [Republicans are] going to do is try to keep on dramatizing the issues that they think are helpful to them,” [Henry] Waxman said. “The next two years I expect all their actions to be campaign oriented…. They’re all about messaging, they’re all about power, they’re all about politics. What they don’t seem to be concerned about is governing.”

So, you mean, trying to push the issues that matter to conservatives does not manifest a concern about governing? Wonder why ol’ Henry just can’t accept that maybe, just maybe, they seek convey the message that they have heard those voters’ concerns as they use their power to act in accordance with the popular will and to advance the national interest. I think that’s what called trying to govern. (more…)

Remember that “net spending cut” the president kept talking about a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away when he was a mere presidential candidate (i.e., the 2008 presidential campaign)? Take note of how Tea Party critics fault us for not more aggressively challenging the spending excessed of the Bush Era?

I keep hearing over and over again this claim from the left and their apologists in the media that the 111th Congress was the “most productive” Congress since the Depression era. Maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t, but since when is doing stuff on its own a positive? Shouldn’t what they’re doing matter more?

Because what Congress did was add $10,492 in debt for every man, woman and child living in the United States.

Funny how they equate productivity with spending money. By their standards, I guess a teenager who runs up her parents’ credit card at the mall, can just say she was being productive.

In the wake of Senate passage of DADT, the folks at AOL asked me to write a piece on what’s next for gays. In my piece, I looked at the process of repeal and the prospects for gay influence in the 112th Congress:

Despite all the hullabaloo over Senate passage of legislation repealing the Clinton-era “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring gays from serving openly in the U.S. armed forces, gay men and lesbians will still have to wait a bit before being able to serve openly, to say nothing of making progress on other legislative fronts.

“After President Obama signs the legislation,” reports AP national security writer Robert Burns, “the Pentagon must still certify to Congress that the change won’t damage combat readiness.” That provision likely secured the support of the two most junior Republicans in the Senate, Massachusetts’ Scott Brown and Illinois’ Mark Kirk, both men with a record of military service.

But this has many wondering how the armed forces will proceed with implementing the policy.

Today truly is an historic day for the military. As Dan posted earlier this morning, cloture was reached on a bill sponsored by hawk Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) (more democracy going on here in that the majority who would vote for it actually did get a chance to have the vote today that they probably wouldn’t have gotten in the 112th Congress next year.

Another aspect of fairness is that it passed on a stand-alone basis, not tucked into the Defense Authorization Bill as Harry Reid had tried to do earlier. By tying such a monumental act to an authorization bill that must be passed every year, Sen. Reid displayed his typical underhandedness and craven lack of integrity that in the end turned out to not even be necessary. That this vote was on its own bill shows the type of transparent and out-in-the-open nature of government that the Tea Parties were trying to achieve. It’s a shame that it came only after Sen. Reid’s back-room bargaining failed. In the end, though, baby-steps…

Third, I cannot express how grateful I am that this didn’t happen at the rap of a judge’s gavel. Nothing could have been more destructive than had our military been forced to make this change not because our commanders had been directed to do so by our elected civilian leaders, but by judicial fiat. Simply put, the judicial branch is not (despite this Administration’s obsession with trying our enemies in civilian courts) charged with, nor does it have the temperament for, taking on the responsibility of national security. While all would agree that the policy is discriminatory, that in and of itself is a very very poor reason to make such a huge change to policy. For example, the ADA doesn’t quite apply to the military, now, does it? On the other hand, give me a truly national-defense reason for considering applying it so, and I (and all military commanders) will be all ears.

Also, while the actual voting seemed to come up quickly, this action was actually very soberly taken and with great deliberation and thought. When the DoD commissioned a survey and the Secretary of Defense implored Congress to wait until that survey’s results and the larger study’s recommendations could be made on how to implement repeal, many looked at the calendar (after the election in which everybody knew the Democrats would lose much power) and sighed. However, patience has paid off and many minds (including those of some Senators’) were changed as a result of the study. Serious thought and concern for our military and the impacts of this action led many of our civilian leaders to support this repeal. Had the activists at HRC (and, yes, LCR also) had their way, this would have been rammed through this summer or fall before the study was made public. The result would have been certain defeat as the effort would have been seen as what it would have been: Another attempt to once again rush through legislation before we’ve had a chance to come up for air and think (and talk) it over.

Finally, and most consequentially, I’m pleased for our Nation. As I’ve stated many times in the past, DADT is a policy that puts our national security at risk. Forget all the whining and pleas about how “unfair” and “bigoted” the policy is. Set aside the childish theatrics of chaining oneself to the White House gate in order to stand up for your “rights” (which, apparently to some, include service in the military for some reason). And let go of the false premise that the policy either drummed out an inordinate number of troops or otherwise dissuaded so many from enlistment in the first place (both are extremely broad generalizations that don’t stand up to statistical rigor). After this repeal is implemented and gay men and women are allowed to openly serve, as I’ve mentioned before, those with security clearances will no longer be blackmailable (for being homosexual, that is) and therefore no longer pose that threat to national security.

As I’ve maintained from the beginning of this debate, the real reason for repeal of this policy should be rooted in national security. While I regret that, even up to the end (as I watched speeches on C-SPAN2), that argument was rarely raised, and when so, was poorly made, the end result will be that national security is strengthened. In these days of Wikileaks and our lowest-ranking members having access to our highest-priority information, removing this security risk is vital.

I’ve got some more thoughts on this, and I’ll be writing a lot this weekend and over the next few weeks as the policy is hashed out in practical terms. But for now, let’s enjoy the knowledge that our nation will be that much more safe as this security threat will soon be removed.

Before we all get jubilent over the impending repeal of DADT (oh, and we will), let’s also take a moment to celebrate this morning’s defeat of the preposterous DREAM Act.

With our Nation’s borders breached so frequently these days by criminals entering our Country illegally and the current Administration having the cajones to actually sue a border state for doing its job, can we pause and agree that rewarding criminals by guaranteeing their progeny legal citizenship status is a bad idea?

Just a thought before we throw our caps in the air over DADT’s repeal later this afternoon, that there are other reasons to celebrate today also.

In a landmark vote for gay rights, the Senate on Saturday voted to advance legislation that would overturn the military ban on openly gay troops known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The 63-33 test vote all but guarantees the legislation will pass the Senate, possibly by day’s end, and reach the president’s desk before the new year.

Interesting that the AP bills this as a vote for gay rights. This issue shouldn’t be about gay rights, but instead about military effectiveness. If gay people can serve without harming unit cohesion, then the ban should be lifted. Fortunately the legislation under consideration returns the decision-making authority over this issue to those who should the final decision, our military leaders:

Even after the measure were to become law, the policy change wouldn’t go into effect right away. Obama and his military advisers would have certify that the change wouldn’t hurt the ability of troops to fight, and there would also be a 60-day waiting period.

Not sure I’ll have much opportunity today to blog on the matter, but will try to update as time allows.